Floor Based Shoulder Stretches For Adolescents

Full Video Transcript

Hi, my name’s Raquel. I’m one of the physiotherapists that works at St Leonard’s Physiotherapy, and I see the adolescents. A lot of the kids that come to see me have sore, tight necks, tight shoulders, and an achy back. And a lot of that is due to all the sitting that they do studying and leaning over screens. So I like to teach them a couple of simple stretches, and one of my favourites we can do here on the floor.

So Claire’s gonna help us. She can assume position. This is called the bow and arrow stretch. So you lie with your knees together and knees in line with hips, and your hands together. And you make the action as though you’re pulling back a bow, bow and arrow. You go all the way back as far as it feels comfortable to go. You might feel a stretch in your chest, you might also feel a little bit of a stretch in your upper back. And it should feel pleasant and nice. And then you go forward again, and you just keep repeating this motion in a nice, slow, rhythmical way. And slowly, you’ll be able to get further and further back. And it’s stretching all of those tight muscles that get tight when we sit and slouch. Beautiful. You can let your head move to where it wants to go, you don’t need to worry too much. And actually, if it feels loose enough, you can start opening the arm out and stretching the arm out for an extra stretch in your chest.

The next thing I want to get people to try and do is the rainbow stretch, and that’s when we reach up over our head, making the shape of a rainbow. Now, this really can be very strong if you’re quite tight in your muscles, so just be careful and gentle when you do it. All the way up, and then all the way back over again, trying to touch your hand to the floor as you go and keep your arm pretty much straight. And you do this as many times as you need to to feel that nice stretch and relief. You might notice when you roll over that one side feels tighter than the other. And if that’s the case, you just need to do a couple more on the tighter side. Beautiful. And that’s it for…